


in the end (artificial flowers bloom, too)

by Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine



Series: Miracles Verse [10]
Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hoo boy here we go, Just to be safe, Mentions of War, The Author Is Mean To The Characters, Trauma, War, anyways angels arent valid, demons arent either, discussions of other realities, gonna try and stay lighter but there are gonna be Consequences, graphic description of violence just to be safe, i could have let them be happy kids and be safe at home, i mean it is a pre-canon war arc after all, if no one else will make that tag then i will, individual chapter warnings in notes of each chapter, instead they get war and trauma, is anyone valid?, is it canon-typical violence if its including tri?, isnt that always fun?, it is 4 am as i type this, secretkeeping!, that's prolly gonna come up at least once, the oc tag is bc there's gonna be a LOT, uhhh, uhhhhh, who knows - Freeform, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine/pseuds/Storm_Clouds_and_Starshine
Summary: A war draw closer as tensions rise between Angels and Demons. Five children who should have had no part in it are drawn into the conflict. One wants to find his partners. One doesn't want to leave. Two are trying to find a way home. And two are more involved in this conflict than they'd thought.(Sequel to "there's no worth (to this unending day)"
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone, Motomiya Daisuke | Davis Motomiya & Motomiya Jun, Motomiya Daisuke | Davis Motomiya & Veemon, Shinomiya Rina & V.V. | VeeVee, well not entirely but you know what i mean
Series: Miracles Verse [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618171
Kudos: 9





	1. Steel

**Author's Note:**

> please note that some tags are carried over from the proceeding work - i.e., some tags on this fic will be tagged far before such content appears in this fic, due to that content having come from the proceeding work and thus being guaranteed to appear in this work at some point.  
> with that said.
> 
> HERE WE GO YALL, THE WAR ARC,, or, well, the beginning of such at least. it will get Fun (tm)  
> i dunno how many chapters we're gonna end up with but the goal is to have at least 25 of 1.9~2k word chapters to get around 50k on this fic as well.
> 
> also this took me a few months to post because i couldn't figure out what to make for the chapter art for the first chapter

Jesmon knew three things for a fact.

  
  


One. He had been created by Homeostasis so serve as their Agent and enact their wishes onto the Digital World Server Avalon.

  
  


Two. He was the only one of his kind, not quite a Digimon, regardless of how close he was in terms of appearance and data configuration.

  
  


Three. The word of the Balancing God was law, and he was bound to follow it over everything else, including his own insignificant, nonexistent personal desires or wishes.

  
  


Thus, if the Balancing God should wish for him to accompany and aid one group of Chosen Children in their progress towards ending the war, then that was what he would do. The word of the Balancing God was law, especially to one who owed his very life and existence to the Balancing God, Oh Great Creator Above, mediator between life and death and they who brought Balance. The Binary God brought stability and life, and the Balancing God brought balance and death, but oh how Jesmon would cling to the life he had been given and devote it to serving they who had given it to him.

  
  


Jesmon was not sure when the Chosen Children had all arrived in the Digital World: Server Avalon, nor was he sure, when or if, they had all been one group before splitting. The Balancing God had told him that he was to search for the bigger group, the group containing the child from another dimension. It was likely that child that was the reason why Jesmon was to find their group in particular. He was aware that the Binary God had sent its two Agents to locate the other, smaller group, and Jesmon was aware that of the three Agents that existed, he was by far the least emotional and most logical one. Used to following orders. Used to ignoring any personal feelings that he had, because the Balancing God’s word was law, and law was what he would adhere to. This was what life was.

  
  


Regardless, regardless, regardless.

  
  


Jesmon had no time to dwell on abstract thoughts. What he needed to do was find the group of children and guide them towards the correct path, ensuring that they would aide in ending the brewing and ongoing war between the demonic and angelic digimon. He would need to find them, soon, and be sure to keep them from returning back to their home dimensions for long enough that the war could be dealt with.

  
  


Jesmon was not guilty. Would not be guilty. Even if the children would be away from their homes for longer than they otherwise might have been, so long as Jesmon acted carefully and with precision, he could prevent them from receiving too much trauma or too many injuries. He would have then fulfilled his mission successfully, as per the wishes of the Balancing God.

  
  


Forwards, then. To meet Rasielmon, and Raguelmon, and to find those children. Forwards in hopes of playing his cards right, in hopes of a lucky rolling of the dice, in hopes of carving delicate figures of glass without striking too hard and shattering them.


	2. Genius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation is held. A child becomes a bit more knowledgeable about the world he is in. A dragonfly plans and makes moves on the chessboard. And tensions remain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, I finished the chapter art so I guess y'all get this chapter early.  
> Can't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but this fic _does_ center around war, so I advise you to keep that in mind while reading.
> 
> fun fact, i wrote almost this entire chapter while at a (socially distanced) cafe. the atmosphere was quite nice - my state's not as overly strict about COVID restrictions, so that's how i was able to go in the first place. i'd like to go back to that cafe again once the pandemic is over (or at least severely lessened in risk). i suddenly understand why so many people go to cafes to write, i wrote like a solid 2k in maybe 12 minutes, as opposed to what would take me a day normally. it was wonderful (also the coffee was decent and there was cheesecake)

Osamu was a genius. Everyone said so - he was smart, and he’d taken an IQ test and scored very high, and he was very good at figuring things out.

  
  


So he knew that the angel digimon were hiding something from him and Ken and Ryou. Not all of them were - some of the lower-leveled digimon (and it hadn’t taken too long for Osamu to get used to it, because they’d been here in this digital world for a week already, and he was smart) were as innocent and honest as Ken was. But a lot of them were hiding something. 

  
  


Asking didn’t get any answers - anyone who  _ did _ answer him just gave him cryptic puzzles that he couldn’t figure out no matter how much he tried. Even a genius couldn’t figure out things without at least a little bit to work off of.

  
  


It wasn’t too bad, though. The angels were nice and treated him and Ken well. They got hot meals three times a day and once Ken had wandered into the kitchens, his puppy eyes had convinced the angels to let them have snacks in between. The angels made sure that all three of them (Osamu, Ken, and Ryou) were warm and comfy and not too hurt, and the big pink rabbit that was named Cherubimon was especially nice, in a kind of motherly way that reminded Osamu of his mama, always fussing over the three of them, Ryou especially. 

  
  


Still, the angles were hiding  _ something _ , and Osamu didn’t like it. Noodle - even if the fox didn’t like being called that his name was  _ still _ Noodle whether he wanted it to be or not - agreed with him, Noodle’s gold eyes always narrowed around any of the angles. Which meant his eyes were narrowed most of the time. There were a lot of angels in this castle. Which made sense since the castle has been made by them in the first place. Noodle only really seemed to not be stressed or on-edge when it was just him and Osamu in a room. Even when Ken was there Noodle would be on-edge, which was kinda silly, because Ken was a sweetheart and wouldn’t hurt anybody. 

  
  


Osamu had told Noodle as such - Noodle had only just looked at Osamu, perched on Osamu’s lap, and scoffed. “Even family can turn their back on you.” The little Kudamon said, grave voice that seemed out-of-place in such a fancy, well-protected place such as this. “No matter their character, even family can cause great harm. Sometimes it’s  _ because _ they’re family that they’re able to do even greater damage than otherwise. Breaking trust is a very painful thing to do, you know.”

  
  


“Ken-chan is still a good kid and wouldn’t hurt either of us.” Osamu retorted, lightly bopping the top of Noodle’s head with a spoon. He probably wasn’t supposed to have the spoon, but it was a pretty shade of gold (and it seemed to be real gold - it bent easy enough, and anything gold that had gold on the surface only didn’t bend nearly so easily) and it was his now.

  
  


Noodle ‘hmph’ed, but didn’t reply to that. Instead he scrambled up Osamu’s arm to wrap himself around Osamu’s neck, keeping his head next to Osamu’s right ear. Osamu wasn’t sure why it was always the right ear, since Osamu was left handed and wouldn’t be able to give him head scritches as easily, but anyways. “We should do more digging to find out what the angels are hiding from us.”

  
  


“And what kind of digging do you intend to do, Noodle-san?” 

  
  


Osamu turned around (he didn’t have to turn far, really, but it was the dramaticism of it all). Dinob-  _ Raphael _ stood in the doorway (or the closest thing to a doorway that could be had in such an overly fancy castle like this). 

  
  


Raphael raised their eyebrow - no, they had a bug face, bugs couldn’t raise eyebrows? Why’d Osamu think Raphael was raising their eyebrows? Maybe it was just the feel of his pose or something. Still, Raphael continued on, cordial and overly-polite tone in their voice never wavering. “I would hope that you don’t intend to dig in the gardens. Pegasmon-kun is very proud of them.”

  
  


Noodle’s eyes narrowed, and the little fox slunk down Osamu’s right arm to puff up all of his fur and nearly hiss. “How much have you heard?”

  
  


Raphael sat (like a cat- ), their legs folded and feet on the ground while their torso remained upright. “Oh, just that you belive the angel digimon are hiding something from you three children, and that you and Osamu-kun are intending to try and figure out what it is that they’re hiding.” Their voice was still polite, but they were still using ‘kisama’ to talk about Noodle, which was still kinda rude. Maybe Osamu should try and have Noodle and Raphael be better friends? They would probably be less-likely to rip out each other’s throats that way.

  
  


“No point in denying it.” Noodle muttered, just loud enough for Osamu to hear, then straightened out, using his Holy Cartridge (which didn’t look very holy, but Noodle refused to let go of it for Osamu to look at, so Osamu could only guess) as a sort of cane to press onto Osamu’s hand and stand himself upright. “What are you going to do with the information of our conversation?”

  
  


“Help you figure it out, of course. Can’t be a good spy without allies.” Raphael’s tone was so light and conversational that it took Osamu a few seconds to register what it was they’d said.

  
  


“Wait -”

  
  


“ _ Spy _ -?!”

  
  


“Shush, both of you.” Osamu and Noodle both quieted. Raphael sighed, then reached into their barely-visible abdominal pouch (Osamu had read some stuff about marsupials online when he was bored one day, but he wondered just how much like the ones from the real world the digimon were. Did digimon get born as little jellybean-looking babies? Did they get furry quickly? Was Raphael good at jumping like kangaroos were?) and pulled out an asleep Ken. “Before you ask, he fell asleep and I didn’t trust the angels not to poke at him to figure out how humans worked, so I took him with me.” 

  
  


“Have you been carrying him this whole time?”

  
  


A nod. “Your brother isn’t very heavy. Especially considering I’m as large and muscular as I am.”

  
  


“Oh show off your strength, why don’t you. . .” Noodle muttered darkly. 

  
  


Osamu flicked the pipe fox’s head. “Don’t be mean.”

  
  


Noodle grumbled more, but didn’t say anything else.

  
  


Raphael waited for a few moments more, maybe to see if Osamu and Noodle were done, before gesturing at them to follow the insect-dragon. Dragon-insect? They were kind of like a cat in a lot of ways though, too, so were they an insect or a cat or a dragon? Either way, Osamu obediently followed them as they navigated their way through the many hallways and rooms of the castle, Noodle curled around Osamu’s arm and shoulder the whole time. 

  
  


Finally, they sat in a more secluded area. Raphael sat on one side of the nook, and gestured for Osamu to do the same. “So,” the insect-dragon-cat began, after Osamu had sat and Ken was tucked back into the abdominal pouch and Noodle had slid off of Osamu’s arms to curl on one of the arms of the nook’s structure, Holy Cartridge held firmly, “what do you want to know?”

  
  


“What do you mean you’re a spy?” Noodle’s words were sharp, but for once he used ‘kimi’ instead of the pattern of calling each other by ‘kisama’ like the two had done previously (which was good, because ‘kimi’ was more polite).

  
  


“I am a spy. I joined the ranks as a V-mon and Wormmon, and worked my way up the ladder in hopes of being able to gain a high position and a high amount of trust so that when the war finally is declared, I will be able to have a larger amount of influence and, hopefully, be able to steer the opinions of the Three Angels towards a war that will put civilians and innocents in the least amount of crossfire.” 

  
  


Osamu’s brows furrowed as he listened to Raphael’s words. “What do you mean ‘war’? What kind of war?”

  
  


Raphael paused - they seemed to blink, but they had compound eyes, so they couldn’t blink. Silly Osamu. “Ah. You are young.” They said, more to themself than anything. Shaking their head, they looked more directly at Osamu (or that’s what he was going to think) and answered. “There is a war brewing. Or conflict, at the least.” They patted the ground next to them. “Closer, little human. You are young. It is best to speak softly in these halls, and best to have someone close when you will need comfort.”

  
  


“Why would I need comfort?” Osamu asked, suspicion in his voice, but scooted over to sit next to Raphael all the same. Noodle skittered along behind him, and curled up in Osamu’s lap.

  
  


Raphael giggled, humorlessly. “Like I said, you’re young. Young things break quickest when thrown into darker truths.” They shook their arms. “Regardless. You asked, and I will answer. Amongst all my flaws, I am honest to those who deserve my honesty.” A sigh, and they looked up at the ceiling, their tail loosely moving to wrap around Osamu and Noodle. 

  
  


“There is a war brewing, Osamu-kun.” They said, bluntly. “There are the Three Celestials - the three highest angels here, who built this castle, Ultimate-level digimon. Cherubimon, the large pink and white rabbit that you have met. Ofanimon, the angel with metal wings and teal armor. Seraphimon, the angel with blue steel armor.” As they talked, they traced vague outlines in the air with one of their three fingers. “There are also the Seven Great Demon Lords - all demons, very high in rank as well, though in a different sense, and all of them Ultimate-level aside from Lucemon: Falldown Mode, the Perfect-level of the group, and Belphemon: Rage Mode, the only Super-Ultimate. There is Lilithmon, who looks like she might be reasonable, but her calm facade is just a cloak for her bloodlust. Lucemon: Falldown Mode, who’s as strong as an Ultimate even at a level below them, who was an angel once if the rumors are true. Leviamon is the largest and has the greatest size, being a large crocodile with scales a shade of red. Beelzebumon, with his tail that can cut you in half and jet-black costume and guns. Demon, often cloaked in robes so that you do not suspect his deadly power until it is too late, with his claws that can easily rend into you. Barbamon who steals and steals and steals, gathering piles of digicores in hopes of using it to gain immortality and driven by a desire not even I know. Belphemon, a Super-Ultimate in their Rage Mode but otherwise an Ultimate in their Sleep Mode, best left asleep for the sake of your life and the life of whoever else is nearby should you wake them.”

  
  


Raphael looked down at Osamu, then, as if to check that he was still there and alright. Then, they continued. “The Three Celestials and the Seven Great Demon Lords are all very, very old. They have been enemies for many years, but as the Seven Demon Lords continue to amass power, and the Three Celestials continue to do the same, the two sides began to cause a divide in the digimon living here in this world. The demons and the angels, those who followed the Seven Great Demon Lords and the Three Celestials. And those poor souls caught in-between.” 

  
  


A pause for breath. “The Seven Great Demon Lords have committed many crimes, as have the Three Celestials. Neither side is truly good, but one side could be counted as the darker shade of gray, depending on who you ask. The Celestials and the Demon Lords grow closer to announcing war, and everyone is at least a little on-edge. Especially those who are higher up and know more about the situation.”

  
  


“So because the Demon Lords and the Celestials don’t get along, there’s gonna be a war and everyone is worried.” Osamu summarized. 

  
  


“Yes. That’s where I come in - there’s at least two neutral parties, such as my family and a smaller group that I’ve become aware of. I’m not as sure of the other group, but they’re comprised of mostly angelic digimon who disagree with the Celestials’ approach. They are all mostly unrelated, but united by a common goal of ending the war as quickly as possible with whatever means necessary. And then there’s my family -” Raphael sighed. “they’re -  _ we’re _ \- all related for the most part, through adoption or otherwise. We want to end the war as quickly as possible  _ without _ harming civilians or children. We’re also mostly made of self-proclaimed demons - my fathers have lived in the very heart of the Dark Area from its first creation, so we tend to be called demons by default due to where we were born.”

  
  


“What’s the Dark Area?” Osamu asked. 

  
  


“It’s where the demon digimon mostly live. It’s where a lot of ‘dark’ data goes - the data that makes a digimon is initially formed in the dark area, and it is formed into eggs that then get sent to the various different Village of Beginnings that exist in this world. When a digimon dies, their data goes back to the Dark Area to get reformatted, turned into an egg, and sent back to a Village of Beginnings. Most times the data that makes an egg gets scattered and mixed in together, so if a digimon dies, part of their data might go into one egg with data from other digimon, and part of their data might go into a different egg, and a different part of their data might go into another egg. That’s why most digimon lose their memories of their previous life when they’re reborn - they’ve got data from as many as twelve digimon, depending on the amount of data mixture, so any memories that they would keep are all scattered and fragmented.” The Dinobeemon explained, looking back up at the ceiling. 

  
  


“How come the Celestials and the Demon Lords are enemies?” Osamu asked, when Raphael didn’t go on for a few more moments.

  
  


Raphael. . . shrugged. “No one really knows. I’m not old enough to have all the details.” They looked back down at Osamu for a few moments, before patting Osamu’s head. “Even if we don’t know, it doesn’t matter that much. Don’t worry about trying to figure it out, you’ll probably just stress yourself out more than you need to.”

  
  


“If you say so. . .” Osamu replied doubtfully. 

  
  


“Regardless,” Raphael began again, “that’s about everything I can explain. So. . . now you know.”

  
  


“What do we do now?” Osamu asked, after a few moments.

  
  


Noodle uncurled from his little circle to look at Osamu. “It’s obvious.” The Kudamon replied. “We wait, and we listen, and we work to make sure as few civilians get hurt as possible.”

  
  


“Not going to suggest trying to stop the war?” Raphael asked.

  
  


Noodle shook his head. “With what you’ve described, it’s more likely that war is going to break out sooner than we all expect. Trying to stop it would be pointless. It’s better to prioritize the safety of civilians now, like Osamu and any other digimon who aren’t apart of either side’s armies, or on a side altogether.” He sounded like he’d had some experience with it.

  
  


Raphael hummed and nodded. “You’re right.”

  
  


“So, how do I do that?” Osamu asked, looking between the two of them.

  
  


Noodle was the one to hum this time. “You are friends with Ryou-kun, who is treated favorably by Cherubimon-san, yes? If we wait and listen, we should be in a good position to learn something or other just by the fact that we’re as high-up as we are due to that faovirtism.”

  
  


“So. . . just keep doing what we’ve been doing and pay attention to what people do?” Osamu summarized.

  
  


Noodle nodded.

  
  


“Well,” Osamu said, half to himself and half to them, “I guess I gotta put my smarts to use now.”

  
  


He just hoped that things didn’t get as bad as Raphael and Noodle seemed to think they would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter art: fox getting booped by spoon and scrunching his face  
> the chapter: discussions of war, (some exposition, actually a lot of exposition oops-), also a child has to deal with this knowledge and has no idea what to do about it
> 
> also to those of you who noticed it - the parents that raphael is mentioning are yasahii and tenkuu, the xv-mon and devidramon (respectively) who live in that cabin in the dark area from the fic before this one. the ones who adopted v.v. and thus rina? yeah, raphael is their older sibling. they've not met them yet, but they Will. (they're also one of rina and v.v.'s older-compared-to-the-others siblings; they're several thousand years old, as is the requirement to reach perfect level)
> 
> i probably could have gotten rid of the exposition but i really couldn't think of how else to do it, and it ended up falling to raphael to do the explaining.


	3. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two cats go to talk to a rabbit. Politics are discussed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii i'm posting this now because school starts back up again tomorrow and i haven't posted anything yet this month. so there's no chapter art this time  
> also, tempted to start only doing chapter art when i feel like the chapter really _needs_ it? if that makes sense? but who knows
> 
> i do know that chapters four and five will probably add a lot of Information so that's fun. chapter five is a work in progress at the moment (it's from wallace's pov and my brain has challenged itself to make wallace's chapter be 12k words so we'll see how that goes) and hopefully i can get myself to write again! it's been Difficult to find the motivation to do so, so that's,, fun
> 
> individual chapter warnings: uuhhhh discussions of war?? can't think of any others off the top of my head. we're in the War Arc, lads

Raguelmon hated Angels.

  
  


Now, angels were fine. Angels were simply a kind of digimon, after all. But  _ Angels _ , the ones with the emphasis on the word,  _ those _ were the kind of digimon that Raguelmon hated. All too easy to fall and cause destruction. All too willing to blame others for their issues. Honestly, they were a nightmare to deal with, which was why Raguelmon had avoided anything to do with them for so long.

  
  


Walking into the grand castle with which the majority of them resided in, however, Raguelmon had a feeling that she’d made a mistake in that regard.

  
  


Even just at the entrance she could feel  _ so many of them _ who were close to falling, or who’d fallen in all but their form. Of the three Celestials that had claimed leadership, she was suddenly certain in a bone-deep way that at least one of them had fallen.

  
  


And her mission was to infiltrate them and protect the small group of human children chosen by the Balancing God to deal with the impending war created by Raguelmon’s lack of attention to what should have been her responsibility.

  
  


Oh, this was going to be a nightmare, wasn’t it?

  
  


Her only consolation was that at least Rasielmon was there. Though an angel, Rasielmon was decidedly  _ not _ an Angel, and Raguelmon thanked the Binary God day in and day out for the existence of her other half’s endless patience and calm. Without it, Raguelmon would have surely gone berserk  _ long _ ago. Perhaps that was the reason why the Binary God had created the two of them - two unrelated digital monsters, alike in appearance though in very little else, growing to love each other and balance each other out. The Balancing God had created the first of the digital monsters, that silver-armored Dragon named Jesmon, but the Binary God had seen fit to create two creatures, named Meicoomon, and had seen fit to see how the two diverged. Perhaps it was a way for the Binary God and Balancing God themselves to balance each other out, to keep one from becoming too powerful - Jesmon was powerful, and logical, like the Binary God, and Raguelmon and Rasielmon were not as powerful but more introspective, emotional, strategical, like the Balancing God. And together, the two Gods created the digimon, with Jesmon and Rasielmon and Raguelmon being their blueprints. Raguelmon did always wonder what had happened to those two Chicomon.

  
  


But, ah - she was getting lost in her thoughts again. A dangerous thing to do, in a land controlled by Angels.

  
  


A Gargomon guided her towards where one of the Celestials was currently residing, at Raguelmon’s request. Rasielmon said nothing, simply walking beside her. They were led through a maze of hallways and entrances to rooms until finally they stopped at the entrance to one of the rooms that had a more ornate door, with gold outlining the frame and the marble of the wall inlaid with various digimoji inscriptions. Small gemstones of a pink and white color were inlaid in the doorframe as well, gently glinting in the torchlight and the light from outside that filled the castle ever-presently.

  
  


How opulent.

  
  


How sickening.

  
  


With a knock on the door, the Gargomon bowed to Raguelmon and Rasielmon both, turning away to do whatever other duties they might need to. “Come in!” Called a voice from inside, one high-pitched and with a warmth in it. Raguelmon shared a glance with Rasielmon, and shook her head slightly.  _ This one is not yet fallen _ . 

  
  


Rasielmon was the one to take the initiative, pushing open the door and walking through it, Raguelmon following her. The Angel on the other side looked up, ears twitching. Cherubimon, it seemed.  _ Ironic , _ Raguelmon mused to herself,  _ that the one so often susceptible to corruption is the only one of the three to not have fallen _ . Perhaps it was because she was aware of this aspect of her nature, and worked to combat it.  _ Then again _ , Raguelmon withheld a sigh, watching the large pink rabbit begin speaking quite excitedly and gesticulating wildly to Rasielmon,  _ perhaps she simply is a fool and avoids her fall by sheer luck _ . She couldn’t rule out that possibility, after all.

  
  


“So!” Cherubimon said at least, when Raguelmon had decided to pay attention to the conversation again. “You wish to watch over the safety of the three . . . humans, you called them?” A nod from the angel and the destroyer of Angels. “And this is because your God has declared so, yes? I have no reason to oppose you, then. Do what you feel is necessary - any missions from one of the Gods is of utmost importance, I am sure.”

  
  


Rasielmon bowed, and Raguelmon reluctantly did as well. Being polite was important, even if there were people Raguelmon did not wish to be polite to. Politeness got you allies. “I’m afraid we must ask you one last thing, Cherubimon-sama.” Rasielmon said, voice all honey and grace. Fitting for an angel.

  
  


“Yes? Anything you need.” Cherubimon assured, her hands folded in front of her chest.

  
  


“We need you not to tell your fellow Celestials about our goals here.” Raguelmon said, simply. Polientess was necessary, but Raguelmon did not have the taste to create honeyed words lined with sugar.

  
  


Cherubimon was visibly taken aback by this. “I - pardon?”

  
  


“Our mission. What we’re trying to do. You can’t tell Seraphimon or Ofanimon.” Raguelmon clarified. Leaning forwards, her voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone, she added, “the Binary God has doubts of the purity of several of the Angels here. We are partly here for the humans, and partly here to weed out and destroy any corruption.” 

  
  


“And. . . you believe Ofanimon and Seraphimon might be close to falling?” Cherubimon asked, hands now nervously fiddling with each other. 

  
  


“I cannot be sure.” Raguelmon said in fake casualness, leaning backwards and shrugging, her eyes closing for a brief moment. Let her think she was uncertain. “I can only sense so much corruption, after all. And there are. . .  _ stains _ left behind by some. . . previously fallen Angels that I was not able to attend to at the time.”  _ The Demon Lords made a mark here _ , was the implied message.

  
  


“I. . . see.” Cherubimon said, slowly, after a few minutes. “Rest assured, Raguelmon-san, Rasielmon-san, I shall hinder neither of you in the mission you have been given. I will speak no word of this conversation to Seraphimon or Ofanimon, nor any of the other Angels.”

  
  


Raguelmon suppressed a grin.  _ How perfect _ . Perhaps Fate was looking out for them. “Should they ask, please tell them that we came requesting to aid you in your work, and that you assigned us to be sure that the three human children and the digimon that are their companions are not threats. In whichever words you’d like.” Raguelmn bowed then, deeper than her first, and Rasielmon mirrored the movement.

  
  


“Of course.” Cherubimon agreed. “Shall I send a summons for Dinobeemon? They are one of our newer members, but they have taken a liking to one of the human children.”

  
  


“Yes, please.” Rasielmon confirmed. “It would be good to find our protectorates quickly, so we may fulfill our mission.”

  
  


“Very well.” Spoke Cherubimon. “It shall be done.”

  
  


There was a sense of finality in those words. Raguelmon couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, they were an omen.

  
  


Regardless. She had her mission. She had cooperation. The pieces were all set. Now all that was left to do was to play and win the game, minimize the losses and come out on the other side of the battlefield the victor with the most parts of her and others left whole.

  
  


Turning, Raguelmon chose to look at the door while she waited. Soon, soon, and then the pieces could be moved. Regardless of what immediate concerns there were. Regardless of her failure to do her duty. Regardless, regardless, regardless. 

  
  


_ It shall be done _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyways! hope y'all are doing well, i ended up rewriting this chapter from the initial version. also raguelmon is fun to write and she and rasielmon are married. they want to adopt kids (but the kids they want to adopt have already been adopted, little do they know). they're great
> 
> tri.: raguelmon is evil  
> me: raguelmon's job was to keep people from turning evil and everyone hated her from keeping them from turning into evil berserkers and you're telling me _she's_ the evil one? sounds like victim-blaming to me
> 
> (also the two chicomon grew up to be yasahii and tenkuu - they're unrelated except by marriage. their child-level forms were both v-mon. they're Old)
> 
> also me, putting in a reference to how cherubimon vice has shown up so frequently in digimon media (even if it's prolly not as frequently as i think)? more likely than you'd expect


	4. Seperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amidst the growing chaos, what might have been a god (had she had any sense of human moralities) stops for a moment - ponders. Then greets those that might be friends, in this time or the next, and goes back to plucking the strings of fate, shaping the world to her whims and watching as her entertainment tears itself apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyways new chapter!! this character is fun. its so hard to keep any sense of "not revealing things youre not supposed to know yet bc plot" when writing her bc she knows pretty much Everything about Everyone but it makes a fun challenge
> 
> its entirely in 2nd person bc i realized id accidentally not used her name till the end and then i realized it would be a lot easier with second person pov
> 
> anyways chapter warnings: not much but there is kinda a casual mention of child soldiers near the end (as in, certain characters had the potential to end up as such), plus casual mention of death and being older than the universe itself

You float, aimlessly. For a while at least. Everything is only for a while, when it’s you, and then it’s for longer or for shorter depending on your mood and depending on how long you want to keep doing something.

  
  


All in the name of fun. Always in the name of fun! Fun is very important to have, after all. What use was a world without fun? What was the point of living if there was no fun to be had? Perhaps there were morals in shades of black and white and grey, but you had long since given up on trying to make themselves fit those morals. Not when you had been searching for anything to be rid of your endless boredom, not when you had had thousands of thousands of thousands of years to live and to do things, with little sleep and a life unending.

  
  


You were getting off track. Or maybe getting back onto it? It was hard to tell anything. Where were you floating now? Oh, over the castle that the Angels lived in.

  
  


The Angels were kind of boring, really. You are not fond of boredom. And the Angels were boring, and well, what was the point of boring things?

  
  


Miracles and Fate had not been boring at all. They’d played with you, been your first friends. The two were not so old as you are, but they were good friends. They’d wanted a gift, the both of them, and you’d given her two first friends a gift, and now they were here in this world somewhere. So you couldn’t go to them and play games and watch as Fate plucked the strings of destiny and of the fate given to one at birth, and you couldn’t see what little things Miracles would look at to change the world entirely. So it was boring  _ without  _ Miracles and Fate, you decided.

  
  


The Angels were very boring though, again. Sitting around and doing nothing, being all holy and righteous and stuff like that. It was very boring. The Raguelmon of this world would come and kill any of them that were too close to ‘Falling’, and so they’d stay the same way they were. Which wasn’t fun at  _ all _ , didn’t Raguelmon know that death meant change and growth and moving past the past? (You carefully kept her thoughts away from  _ that event _ .)

  
  


So obviously the answer was to keep Raguelmon away from the Angels. For a little bit! You’d just meant to keep Raguelmon away for a little bit. It was fun watching the Angels change so rapidly, though. Now that that threat wasn’t there, the change was explosive and easily seen. So many of them fell! There were Demon Lords, all seven of them, and tons of different demon digimon, and now there were digimon with demonic natural evolutions and wasn’t that fun?!

  
  


Only now there was  _ tension _ and  _ war _ to think about, and you knew you knew you knew that you were supposed to let it happen  _ naturally _ just in case, but that wasn’t fun  _ at all _ . But you’d be patient and let it play out as best you could, because really there wasn’t much difference between it happening  _ now _ and it happening in a few thousand years. A few thousand years was only a small droplet in the ocean of years you’d lived after all, and oceans were large and expansive and everyone knows that you had to be careful treading them because storms could happen quite easily and what were you talking about again?

  
  


Right, right, war. It’d happen soon enough! And if eventually you decided it wasn’t taking itself seriously then you’d poke a few things and  _ make _ there be war. You were good at making things happen. You were  _ very _ good at making  _ destructive _ things happen, and you were  _ not _ going to think of  _ that event _ . 

  
  


In the meantime, you’d mess with this world’s Jesmon. Server Avalon was a bit different from some of the other worlds you’d been to, but it was also really fun because of that. Case in point: Jesmon. Always so stoic! Always convinced that he didn’t have emotions or that the only thing that mattered was following Homeostasis’ orders, because ‘the Balancing God’s word is law’ or such. He couldn’t even talk! Though maybe that was more of a 'he was the first being made and no one really knew how to do things’ issue as opposed to a ‘Homeostasis-slash-Balancing God issue’. Still, if you managed to talk to him and poke him enough for him to bare his teeth at you once or twice, it was a victory! It was hard to know when to poke enough to get someone to change and when was too much that would break them, but you prided yourself in learning very quickly what the difference between those two was per person. 

  
  


And you thought it was working, anyways. Jesmon seemed much less stiff and logic-driven than he had been those few eons ago when you’d first started poking him. Rasielmon and Raguelmon probably hadn’t changed  _ as _ much (though Raguelmon was probably guilty for ‘not doing her job’, but you didn’t know why the cat would feel guilty about helping something fun happened - who cared if a few Angels fell and there was lots of death? Death was good! It meant change and growth! And besides sometimes death and killing was fun, if you did it the right way. Everything could be fun). 

  
  


Regardless, you’d been prepared to have to wait for another few thousand years for the tensions to finally break and war to happen. Oh they were tense enough, but without an outside catalyst you didn’t really think they’d snap to war  _ quite _ so easily.

  
  


But! What joy! Outsiders! Small human children with their partner-bonds made by Homeostasis, with Yggdrasil managing the network as always, and that was  _ fun _ ! There’d been that Parrotmon and Greymon fight in the Human World, you’d hopped in and out of it often enough to know that, and you knew that Homeostasis had looked at those eight children and decided they would be a plan to use for the future. And then the small child had wandered into Server Avalon through the tear in reality, and another wandered in after them, and four more fell in through other tears, and another child was found and dragged into Server Avalon from a different universe entirely! Oh, that would be so much  _ fun _ now, with these variables and pieces you had not had before!

  
  


And their partners were just as odd, as well - the child from the different universe brought a small dragon of her own, and the first child and a different child had partners that were from a third universe, different still. One of them was a dragon thrown in from somewhere else, and the other was a horse that you had found and picked yourself, because sometimes that was what you had to do, was it not?

  
  


Still, there were  _ variables _ now, and the war would be set to start at any minute and there would be so much  _ fun _ to be had. War wasn’t fun for those taking  _ part _ in it, but from a chesmaster’s perspective, from the point of view that you had, detached, uninvolved with any crucial details, you could have fun, poking at one side or another, seeing what happened. It would be fun.

  
  


Humming and floating, you would need to decide where to check first  _ before _ poking. Just in case. Maybe those first few children? You weren’t  _ entirely _ sure who was where and who was with who, but most of the children that’d stumbled in  _ seemed _ to be gathered in one group. Maybe like three of them were with the Angels, but Raguelmon and Rasielmon were there (and so was that Sleipmon you’d grabbed from the other universe - though he was a Kudamon now, which was really funny to think about because now the prestigious Royal Knight had to get used to being tiny and a noodle now).

  
  


Probably better to go visit those kids who  _ weren’t _ with the Angels then. You weren’t  _ quite _ sure you wanted to look at Raguelmon just yet, the cat might recognize you. And besides, Jesmon was supposed to be with those kids anyways, and he was  _ kind of _ your friend, so it would work out!

  
  


That decision made, you paused from your floating for a moment,  _ Feeling _ , and without a sound you disappeared from your previous location and reappeared in the new one. The space of  _ Dimensions _ , between where the worlds lied, was always thrumming and breathing along with your own heartbeat and breaths, and the gently-pulsing lights of mauve and purples and deep endless blues and the occasional pinpricks of  _ light _ that shone gold - it would have brought any normal creature to tears at the beauty, or maybe at the horror. Beauty at the colors, the patterns, the swirling uniqueness and endlessness - horror at the gaping void that it was, unending, yawning and consuming, barely any light living for long. But you were not a normal creature, anyways - the Dimensions was your home. A part of your soul, perhaps, attuned to her wishes and thoughts and desires, and you molded it as one might mold a piece of clay or a drawing.

  
  


Some people, in a few different dimensions, called it the “Quantum Sea”. Which was dumb. It wasn’t water, so it wasn’t an ocean, so it wasn’t a sea. So you would call it the Dimensions and not the Quantum Sea.

  
  


The space that you appeared in was rather simple, really. A small little camp, several bodies gathered around a small fire with the embers beginning to go out. Well, that wouldn’t do. The children would get cold - and he’d hated being cold before, your little brother, so the children would need to be warm. Drifting down from your mid-air perch and landing on the grass without any noise whatsoever, you glided, unheeding of anything around you, over to where the embers were, picking a few at random and holding the pieces of mostly-burnt wood in your hands. It was warm, yes - hot, perhaps, but not so much that it hurt you. Nothing could hurt you anymore. Nothing had hurt you for a while. Beginning to hum to yourself, you placed the coals and embers back into the little makeshift firepit, stirring them around with your hands until they began to glow again, flames coaxed into existence by your hands and your wants. 

  
  


When the fire had grown back up to a gentle roar, you looked over at the children in question. They all looked so. . .  _ young _ and  _ small _ . Several centillions ago, you would have stopped to think about what you were doing. Several centillions ago, you would have taken pity on the young things and sent them all back home. But that was several centillions ago (around seven exactly, if you had to guess), and you were older now, and tired, and there were so few things that could keep you entertained, in your long-lived state of existence. And whatever other morals might have existed other than the polarity of fun being good and not-fun being bad had long since crumbled away from that time. Several centillions ago you would have sent the children home, perhaps with the digimon they’d been partnered to, and let them sleep, and let them be safe, and make sure that they would not have to participate in this war. But that was several centillions ago, and you were not the same person now as you were then.

  
  


The children were asleep, all of them. Jesmon, the one you’d befriended, was nearby as well. He moved towards them steadily - no doubt to fulfil some accomplishment from Homeostasis, that Balancing God of his. And yet the children all still slept. There was the two siblings, the sister’s bird and the brother’s dragon. There was the boy and his two rabbits. Last was the girl from a different dimension, her green hair standing out against the blonde and auburn as a less-likely natural color (not natural at all, really, but that strange ability that they both shared made for biological oddities). If the girl opened her eyes they’d undoubtedly be red, and it was to no surprise that her little blue dragon curled so close to her. You had tied the fate of the two together, after all - tied the fates of five children and the one adult ( ~~_ taiga nikolai akihou yuuya rina mirei _ ~~ ) and the fates of their partners ( ~~_ digimaru sashenka digitorin black v.v. mastemon _ ~~ ) together, and there was no reason why V.V. and Rina should be separated.

  
  


“Perhaps that’s why Rina showed up in this world when something happened to V.V.’s v-pet.” You mused to yourself, drawing your hand out of the fire. “But then again,” you continued, “perhaps not. I’m not Fate, so I guess I can’t really say for sure.” 

  
  


Movement caught your eye, and you turned, hair getting in your face for a few moments from the motion, floating at it tended to do. Staring back at you, towering above yourself and the four children and the five digimon, was Jesmon. 

  
  


He tilted his head, and brought his hands up to his chest from where they’d been at his sides. “What are you doing?” He signed, motions rigid and as emotionless as he was probably trying to be in that moment. 

  
  


You grinned. “Oh, nothing much.” You said, as if you were discussing a mundane school project over a biscuit. “Just checking in on these kiddos. Their fire had almost gone out, you know. And little kids shouldn’t be cold, right?”

  
  


Jesmon stared at you for a few moments. Then, slowly, deliberately, he signed, “what game are you trying to play?”

  
  


You laughed. “Isn’t  _ that _ the question?” Drawing your knees up to your chest as you began to float again, you hummed. “I don’t think this game has a name. I mean you could  _ make _ one, but ‘send two or more armies into war while also providing humans as a resource for strength and see what happens’ is kind of a long name.”

  
  


Jesmon blinked. Then his eyes narrowed, and his movements had a decidedly more angry feel to them. “You mean to say that you are expecting these children to be used as test subject by either side of the war?”

  
  


“Hmmmm more like child soldiers, actually. It’s more fun if they actually fight in the whole thing, rather than just be shuffled away from side to side.” You commented, offhand.

  
  


Glancing back up at Jesmon gave you the response you’d expected. If the metal-plated-scaled dragon had been mad before, he was  _ furious _ now, and his signs were very fast and sharp. “You mean to tell me that you are willingly creating  _ child soldiers _ ?!”

  
  


“Only if they end up there!” You said, hastily, waving her hands about. “I’m not gonna influence them  _ directly _ ! It’s up to the people here to figure out if they’re useful or not and if the kiddos are gonna be made to fight or not! Besides, there’s the other three over with the Angels, so sooner or later  _ somebody _ ’s gonna figure it out, I don’t gotta  _ do _ anything.”

  
  


Jesmon narrowed his eyes at you further. “Why do you do these things?”

  
  


“Because I’m me.” You answered, simply, as if it were obvious (which, it really should be). “Because I’m older than this universe, or the universe before it, or the universe before  _ it _ , and because I am very old and bored and constantly seeking entertainment. Everything I do is on a whim, you see, Jesmon-kun?” You leaned up to his face, suddenly much closer than you had been before. “If I do not like what happens in this universe, then I can always go back to the point before where I think things went wrong and make a universe split off from this one, and push a few things here or there to make it how I want it to be. For all you know, this is one of the many millions of branches of universes that came from one initial universe, all because I didn’t like how the universe before this one went, or how something happened.”

  
  


Jesmon’s eyes were a very pretty shade of gold. More of a yellow-gold than the gray-gold that V.V. had (or had in several universes at least - it was odd how in some universes his eyes were red, yet were gold in others - was there any particular reason behind it, you wondered, or was it just a little trick that Fate or Miracles slipped in as a joke for her to find?). His pupils were also very - what was the word? You  _ knew _ the word, it was when your pupils were very very tiny like when there was a lot of light and you didn’t need to see as much because otherwise you’d go blind. Anyways, back to Jesmon.

  
  


“I’m surprised you’re still upset about this.” You said, putting one hand on either side of his face, below his eyes. “You’re old. Not as old as I am, but old enough that you should know that immortality gets boring. Or old age I guess, I don’t know if you’re immortal or not. Regardless!” You clapped your hands together. “I’m not gonna stop you from doing anything either! So if you wanna keep these kids safe and child-soldier-less, go right ahead and do your best! You’ll need to collaborate with Raguelmon and Rasielmon on that one, but it can  _ probably _ be done.”

  
  


Jesmon tilted his head. “You seem awfully willing to abandon plans you were very certain of before.” He signed, back to that careful, deliberate movements. A pity, you always did like it better when he let himself display his emotions.

  
  


You shrugged. “I mean. . . when your life gets dedicated to finding entertainment, you get used to just watching as things happen. Sure, you can mess with stuff, but if you mess with everything then you know how it’s gonna end, and then it’s not fun anymore. So it’s more fun if you only poke a few things and let everything else happen how it’s gonna happen.”

  
  


Jesmon sighed, admitting defeat for the moment. It wasn’t a sound, really - more of an un-sound. Maybe someday you’d dig a little into this world and figure out how he was able to do that. It seemed cool.

  
  


“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name this time, will you?” He asked, signs more fluid now than they had been before. Probably because he’d gotten used to your appearances and him having to ask that same question over and over.

  
  


You grinned, floating back down to the ground and walking over to where the children (and one who wasn’t really a kid anymore) slept. “I think I’ll give these two a gift.” You muttered to yourself, tapping the one named Daisuke and then the one named Wallace on the forehead. “Maybe a gift for this one too.” You added, pressing a hand onto the belly of the one Magnamon. “He seems like he’ll need a gift.”

  
  


Your gift-giving done, you straightened and looked at Jesmon properly. “To answer your question, Jesmon-kun? Nah. Not gonna tell you my name yet.” You held up a finger. “But like I’ve been saying. You can call me Riku, ‘kay?” 

A wink, a decision of the next universe to haunt for a bit, and then you were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> riku time!!!
> 
> anyways i promise i didnt mean to post this so late, ive had the chapter art done for weeks, but i got distracted working on chapter 5. its 6k already and i only JUST got to the first of ONE of the like six things i wanna get done this chapter. its all in wallace's pov bc i felt bad about not writing him as much even though his pov is hard for me. so yall are gonna get an extra long chapter from the pov of the good kid who appeared in one movie and as a cameo in another and you WILL appreciate him because he deserves it


	5. Chapter 5 - Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a god awakens, several villages are visited, a name is given, and a goal is closer than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay y'all might be a bit upset at me for the sketchy chapter art later on in this chapter but im IMPATIENT and wanted to post this chapter so you get a colored sketch for chapter art. in my defense, my style takes a while when its as fancy as chapter art has usually been (well, "usually", if we only count the times it's fully shaded and textured) and the scene in question that was drawn is pretty complex
> 
> also i promise that the majority of the chapter isnt as chaotic as the beginning bit is, please bear with if it its difficult to read, it doesnt show up past the first bit i promise
> 
> ALSO i finally named a character whos name ive had picked out for AGES - i cant wait to finally be able to refer to them by name,,
> 
> this chapter is like 9.7k by accident. oops. (is a longer chapter an acceptable trade for having not as polished art??)
> 
> ANYWAYS, CHAPTER WARNINGS: not much off the top of my head, but there is a weirdly formatted bit at the beginning (weirdly formatted on purpose) and later on there's a scene where a character has several dreams where lots of people die, so if you don't like the dying bit then skip that big chunk of italics, you'll know when you see it

There is a breaking.

  
  


There is a breaking and breaking and breaking and breaking and splintering apart and tearing into pieces and it hurts it hurts it hurts

_ stardust dances on its skin _

  
  


The lives of millions, billions dance on its eyelids and it Sees and knows everything and knows nothing

  
  


Its twin sits across from it asleep unaware unknowing of what it truly is of what the twin truly is unaware unaware unaware

  
  


_ Its is chaos _

  
  


It is devastatingly powerful and merciless and merciful and it has been cruel and kind and soft and hard and painful and painless

  
  


_ Gods are not meant to be confined to human bodies _

  
  


Forces of nature that spanned universes should not have been confined to human bodies. The Sister, oh her great glory and power and infinite Wanting had given them a gift a curse a curse a curse

  
  


_ They have been given human bodies and human lives and human thoughts and forces of nature are not meant to conform are not meant to be human _

  
  


Golden and silver and there is none none none it is all gone where did it go how did such power such radiance such  _ nothingness _ get confined to such a tiny body

  
  


Its twin wakes and looks at it

  
  


There are no words exchanged

They do not need to speak in words.

  
  


_ Who are you who are you who am i who are you what are we now what have we been torn into  _

  
  


Thoughts stream from one to the other, Twins created at the beginning of a multiverse raised by the Sister of her own power and inevitable glory and inevitable creation and devastation.

  
  


Words come slowly, endless infinite wisdom of centillions of years compressed into the mindlessly shatteringly static of four simple years. “Miracles.” It says, blinking at Its twin.

  
  


“Fate.” The Twin responds, and It feels  _euphoria dysphoria **familiarity**_ at that Name which embodied its Self.

  
  


It needs to sleep. It needs rest. The human mind needs time to process things, and the other small humans who rest around it would not understand their Endlessness of existence. Humans are not meant to understand the full being of a god.

  
  


Fate lies back down upon the ground, rough dirt against its hands and limbs and Body. Miracles makes a similar motion, resting against the blue-white-gold dragon that contains a piece of Miracles’ Self within his body - the Dragon that had been Bonded to Miracles, the Dragon that would not exist without Miracles gifting a piece of how power so that its Dragon could take the needed form.

  
  


Fate does not have its Rabbit - it had no self to tear pieces off of, and there was no need. The Bond still existed, split between a Horse and a Goat and one was the light future of destiny that was  _ malleable changeable _ always influenced by the decisions one made and one was the death  _ the darkness the despair  _ that was prophecy that future that was made at the beginning of each being’s life and both were bound to Fate and both were Bonded and contained pieces of Fate’s Self.

  
  


Fate laid back down and pulled his Horse and his Goat to him, in their smaller forms that pretended to be rabbits. It would sleep. And the morning would bring clarify, would bring a return to those human thoughts, would bring Fate back to this curse that it had begged for so tearfully with Miracles by its side.

  
  


Sleep. And then answers.

  
  


~~~

  
  


Wallace woke up.

  
  


For a moment, it was like nothing had happened - like everything was the same, like he’d just woken up early before he was supposed to normally, and Momma would be getting him soon to give him breakfast and then he’d go sit and watch TV or draw or play around in the flower fields near the house while Momma went and did her work. Like he’d woken up a few minutes before Jun or the nice dragons Yasahii and Tenkuu would have woken him up to get him breakfast, and then he’d play with the other little dragons and digimon that all lived in the big cabin. Like he was just a normal kid.

  
  


Then the moment passed, gone like the blink of an eye, and Wallace’s four-year-old thoughts were drowned out by the crooning song of Fate’s lamenting spiraling mind-that-was-not-a-mind.  _ Oh why Sister why why why why why did we ask for this why does it hurt _

  
  


Stop. Don’t think. Breathe in, breathe out. In and out, again and again, until your head stops spinning.

  
  


There. That’s better.

  
  


Wallace blinked a final time, and looked up to see a metal dragon watching him.

  
  


He tilted his head. The dragon did the same. Part of Wallace - the part that was Fate, said that  _ his name is Jesmon and he is the First and he has so many choices but there is no fate made for him and how does he exist with no fate _ -? The rest of him said that he looked very intimidating sitting there, watching Wallace and all the other children, but also that the dragon looked kind of. . . lonely.

  
  


“Hi.” Wallace said, in English. Did Jesmon know English? He was the First, but did that mean he knew other languages, or-?

  
  


“Hello.” The dragon signs, slowly, and Wallace makes himself pay attention. It’s only thanks to being Fate that he knows what the dragon is saying at all - probably one of those weird “being a formerly bodiless force of nature that’s confined itself into a four-year-old body” thing or something. His thoughts are all over the place, but Wallace - Fate - can’t bring himself to care.

  
  


Wallace brings his hands up to his chest, doing his best to keep his ring finger and pinky and his index finger and middle finger pressed together, so that it’s like he has three fingers and not five. Jesmon ( _ and Raguelmon and Rasielmon _ ) used a form of sign language made by someone with only three fingers, so it probably wouldn’t work right if he used five fingers. “Why are you watching us?”

  
  


“The Balancing God sent me to.” The movements are calm and controlled. Yes, the dragon prepared himself for this. The Fatestrings of possibilities stretch out in endless branches, but lightly running his fingers over the current thread reveals the past. It’s very helpful. Wallace can’t do it as well as he’d  _ like _ to, as well as he had been  _ able _ to, but he’s only just remembered what he  _ was _ , and he needs time to get back into the old habits of using his abilities. Those probably weren’t the right words and that probably wasn’t what getting back into old habits was like, and he was probably going on a tangent again, but he and Miracles had picked up  _ some _ of their Sister’s habits if not all, so it couldn’t be helped, really. 

  
  


“That makes sense.” Wallace says, simply. Only paying half of his attention to Jesmon and the conversation anymore, he lets his fingers trace down the Fatestrings - he cannot control them as much as he would like, cannot tug on them and force the events to shift to his will the way he had before, not quite yet, but he can still look and see which events may happen, determine which would be the best course of events. He’s good at that.

  
  


“We’re gonna go to a village and look for a portal or something so we can go home.” Wallace says, interrupting whatever it was Jesmon had been about to sign. “Do you want to come with us? You seem nice.”

  
  


Jesmon hesitated. 

  
  


“You seem nice!” Wallace repeated. “Some of the digimon have been mean, but you seem really nice and you’re probably lonely, right? We could be our friends!”

  
  


Finally, the steel-armored dragon nodded. “Very well.” He signed. “I shall accompany you.”

  
  


Wallace wanted to cheer - this was good, this was  _ very very good _ . Bad Things would happen if Jesmon didn’t join them - so it was good that he was. Instead, Wallace just smiled and said “yay!” like the four-year-old child his body was.

  
  


Jesmon blinked, and tilted his head to the side ever-so-slightly. Wallace wasn’t entirely awake enough to care.

  
  


The others woke up soon after, in varying levels of speed. Jun woke up quickly, a small yawn before stretching and getting to work on getting everything mostly packed up so that they could go back to moving - though there wasn’t much to pack up in the first place, just a few blankets that they’d all been sleeping on and the small package of food they’d taken with them, since Yasahii the XV-mon had said that finding fruits and berries that were safe to eat was pretty easy. 

  
  


Miracles -  _ Daisuke _ sneezed himself awake. Literally. Kiseki woke up first, probably because Daisuke was sneezing and was laying against Kiseki in the first place, so by the time Daisuke had woken himself up, Kiseki was looking at him with a lot of fondness. It made sense. Kiseki and Daisuke’s Fatestrings were all tangled together - probably because they were partners, and that had to mean  _ something _ \- so it made sense that they’d care about each other a lot in specifics.

  
  


Rina ended up waking up after everybody else - V.V. had to shake her and gently bap her with his paws until she woke up. She pouted when she did, but she eventually got up along with everybody else. Tailmon and Ryuudamon and Dodomon all woke up at around the same time she did, but they woke up quicker.

  
  


“So, who’s this?” Jun asked, nodding at Jesmon. 

  
  


“His name’s Jesmon! He’s nice.” Wallace answered for the dragon, since he didn’t think anybody other than him or Daisuke would be able to understand Jesmon’s sign language. “He’s gonna come with us and help us find our way home!”

  
  


Jun looked at Jesmon. “Is that true?”

  
  


Jesmon nodded, slowly.

  
  


Jun nodded back at him, then stood up. “Well, if you say so. We gotta get moving, anyways. We don’t wanna burn too much daylight, right?”

  
  


“It’s not a good idea to burn daylight, I don’t think.” Daisuke commented, almost absently. He furrowed his brows. “But I don’t think you can  _ literally _ burn daylight?”

  
  


“It’s a metaphor, Daisuke.” Wallace told him. “You don’t need to take it literally.”

  
  


Daisuke blinked. “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”

  
  


Wallace looked a Jun, who was looking at him and Daisuke. She looked kinda confused, but shrugged after a few seconds. “Anyways, let’s get going.” 

  
  


None of them really knew where they were going, other than forward. Wallace decided he’d just - look at the Fatestrings a  _ little _ bit, to get an idea of where to go. Jun gave him a questioning look when he took the lead, but he said “it’s a hunch” and she seemed to not be bothered after that. Chocomon and Gummimon sat on Wallace’s shoulders, and Kiseki carried Daisuke, like normal, but this time Aquilamon just walked behind Jun, and V.V. curled around Rina’s neck as they all walked, and Jesmon followed them without making any noise at all.

  
  


They stumbled they way into a village. It wasn’t very big, but it was pretty fancy-looking, for a village. The buildings were all made of stone bricks, and the roads or pathways were made from cobbled stone, and there was the glass panes in the windows that made it look like a fancier village than the one near the jungle that they had been in before. There wasn’t nearly as diverse a collection of digimon in this village, either, from what Wallace could see - it looked like there were only angel digimon. Maybe that was why the village was fancier - the digimon were mostly all the same, so maybe they didn’t have to keep changing stuff to make it more accessible for the various different kinds of digimon? That would make sense.

  
  


They wandered their way up to one of the digimon - they were tall, and wore a white outfit with a metal helmet and two fluffy feathered wings, and had a pink sash around their arm and leg. A Pidmon, Wallace thought. “Hi,” Jun began, having gone back to being at the front of the group, “do you mind telling us who’s in charge here? We’ve been traveling for a little bit, and we don’t want to be a bother, but we wanna talk to them about maybe us staying here for a day or two, if that’s okay?”

  
  


The angel digimon paused for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll go get Angewomon-san for you.” They promised. “Wait here, please.”

  
  


They waited as asked, though Jesmon instead wandered off somewhere. After a few moments, a different angel digimon was led up to them. They were kind of tall and wore a sort of white bodysuit, with their belly and arms and one of their legs not covered by the outfit. They also had a purple sort of scarf that wove around one of their arms, a helmet that covered their face, and long blonde hair. They were probably the Angewomon that the other angel had mentioned. 

  
  


“You wished to speak with me?” She asked, coming to a stop and looking at them all expectantly.

  
  


“Yes.” Somehow Jun was able to keep her voice from trembling, despite the aura of intimidation that Angewomon had around her.

  
  


“Very well. Follow me, please.”

  
  


They did as asked, eventually coming to a stop in the center of the village. “It is better to talk here than on the outskirts. So,” she began, and Wallace got a sudden feeling of dread. “You wished to see about staying here?”

  
  


“Yes.” Jun said again. “We’ve been traveling a bit, and we wanted to see if we could stop here for a bit and get some more supplies? We’re trying to find a way back home.”

  
  


Angewomon hummed. “That is fair. You are all very young, after all. May I ask where you came from beforehand?”

  
  


“We were at a village near the edge of a jungle before here. It was lead by a Sagittarimon?” Wallace offered. “And then before that we were at a cabin in some place where it was really cold. There was an XV-mon and a Devidramon?”

  
  


As soon as the words left his mouth, Wallace realized he’d said the wrong ones. Several Fatestrings went black and crumbled, and Angewomon’s whole demeanor changed.

  
  


“An XV-mon and Devidramon, you say. . .?” She hummed again, and the aura of intimidation got denser. “Well, you are only children, after all.” Wallace knew,  _ knew _ that he said the wrong thing - 

The angel - no, the  _ Angel _ , grinned at them all. “What a shame if you were to get hurt.” She croons, words sickeningly honey-sweet.

  
  


Wallace steps back. Jun and Daisuke and Rina all step back.

  
  


The Angel steps forwards.

  
  


This is bad.

  
  


This is very very bad.

  
  


There are too many Fatestrings, and Wallace can’t look at them clearly enough, and he doesn’t know what to do -

  
  


The Angewomon lunges. Something else, something next to Wallace, lunges from where it was to meet her.

  
  


Chocomon and Gummimon were small, as rabbits. And now they are bigger, one with a pair of denim and one with a yellow tracksuit and red scarf, and several Fatestrings blacken and shrivel to dust only for new Fatestrings to take their place.

  
  


The Galgomon and Turiemon stand firm, teeth bared on both of them. They’re glowing the faintest bit. Wallace can feel the bit of his Self that has been slipped into their forms, and no doubt the Angels all around can feel it as well.

  
  


There are several angelic digimon all around them. But there has been an evolution, and Wallace is almost certain that they are much, much more wary of the group of small humans than they were before.

  
  


Angewomon doesn’t move from where she’d been stalled. “Incredible. . .” She breathes, seeming to be in a trance. “I had heard rumors of digimon growing faster than they should, but to see it up close . . .”

  
  


She steps forwards again, and this time Chocomon and Gummimon  _ glare _ at her. There’s a pulling at the center of his chest, and Wallace can  _ see _ the death and growth of Fatestrings, can see the different paths and how they all wind around and apart from the fate that both share, and the two rabbits glow again.

  
  


An Andiramon (virus-attribute, Wallace notes idly, not the vaccine-attribute that seemed to pop up more commonly) and a Rapidmon (perfect-level, not armor-level - an armor-level requiring using a digimental, which required a more permanently separated piece of Wallave’s Self, and would cause a Binding much stronger than what was had) are the same level as an Angewomon. And there are two of them and they are twins, and even in the village filled with Angels there is no doubt that should Wallace or the other two humans wish, they would quickly find themselves outclassed, even if not outnumbered.

  
  


It’s Jesmon’s casual stroll through the village, Angels parting around him, that gets the tensions to break somewhat. He looks at the scene, once, and tilts his head the smallest degree, blade extending from the odd sheathes covering the backs of his hands, tail-blade raised similar to how a scorpion’s might. “We’re leaving now.” He signs, simple and to-the-point as it always is.

  
  


None of the Angels object. It is the smartest decision they could have made - out of all the possible outcomes, all the different destinies, this is the one where none of them will die today. There is no point in arguing with the Agent of one of the two Gods, after all.

  
  


They begin walking through the village again, to the other side. The angels all part around the group, staring warily as Jesmon, whos blades have yet to be retracted into their gauntlets. Chocomon and Gummimon hover protectively around Wallace, the Andiramon and Rapidmon not used to their forms but too worried about Wallace’s safety to care. It’s sweet, and kind of them.

  
  


It is not long before they find themselves in a clearing, deep into the forest that had surrounded the village, and once they are there Wallace is the first to drop to the ground and start crying. There - all the Fatestrings showing him all the ways things could have been bad - if there had been a second’s difference, they’d all be dead, and Wallace had  _ seen _ it all -

  
  


He’s not sure when, but he blinks, and suddenly he’s in Jun’s arms, the older girl hugging him close. His head has been tucked into her shoulder, and there are tears on her jacket. Tears on his face. Looking up and sniffling, Wallace sees Daisuke, Chocomon, Gummimon, and Kiseki all worriedly standing near, too close to be unintentional but far enough away that they could avoid bothering Jun.

  
  


“Hey.” Jun says, softly, pulling back from Wallace a bit. Her jacket is soft, and her hair is soft, and her eyes are soft and kind. She looks a lot like Daisuke, when you put them both side-by-side, maybe the main difference, other than her being a girl and being six years older, being that her hair is a few shades lighter, a few shades more red, and that eyes are a bit darker. It is stunning how much the two resemble each other. 

  
  


“. . . hi.” Wallace says, slowly. “Sorry for crying on you.”

  
  


“It’s okay.” Jun tells him, reaching forward to wipe the tears off of his face. “Daisuke-chan has cried on me all the time from when he got scared before. It’s just your turn to cry on me now, I guess.”

  
  


For a few moments they all sit there, Jun loosely cuddling Wallace, Daisuke sitting next to Kiseki, the dragon and Wallace’s two rabbits sitting a few feet away. Rina over by one of the trees, clinging to her own small dragon and to Jesmon, who is watching them all with some odd look.

  
  


Then, Daisuke suddenly lunges forwards and wedges himself between Jun and Wallace, tearing up himself. “It was so scary!” He wailed, four-year-old hands gripping his sister’s jacket and gripping Wallace’s shirt. “The angels were scary and mean and I thought they were gonna hurt somebody and I don’t think I could’a made a good enough miracle to keep everybody safe if that happened!”

  
  


The part that was Fate took that knowledge of making miracles and filed it away, used it as a bit of evidence to be sure that Miracles had awakened and regained his sense of Self as well. The part that was Wallace started crying again, clinging to Jun and Daisuke as well. “There were so many ways everything could’a gone wrong!” He sobbed, hugging both Daisuke and Jun. “And we all could’a got hurt and died and what if Jesmon hadn’t got there soon enough and-” he wasn’t sure if he was babbling in English or in Japanese, but he and Daisuke both cried, and a poor, poor Jun had to console them both.

  
  


Eventually, both of their tears dried, and Wallace and Daisuke were both able to stand up again. Rina slowly walked over, once Kiseki had scooped up Daisuke and once Chocomon and Gummimon had moved to crouch next to Wallace. “. . .is everybody okay now?” She asked, slowly, cradling V.V. close to her like he might disappear. “No more tears?”

  
  


Daisuke shook his head, and Wallace copied the action. He could have said something, but he didn’t want to, and he didn’t want to look at the Fatestrings, either.

  
  


“Are  _ you _ okay?” Jun asked, Aquilamon hopping along behind her as she walked up to Rina. “You’re not scared?”

  
  


Rina paused a moment, then shrugged. “Well, I mean -  _ drrrrr _ \- everybody at school is mean already, and angels aren’t as scary as bullies.”

  
  


Again with that drum roll. “Why’d you do the drum roll?” 

  
  


Rina looked at Wallace, her head turning, the rest of her body staying perfectly still. “Somebody has to do the drum rolls.” She answered softly. 

  
  


“I guess so.” Wallace agreed, and the conversation was cut off when Jun announced that they should probably find another village, so that they wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground again. 

  
  


Jesmon took the lead this time, and they all followed his silent footsteps. Wallace wasn’t sure what everyone else was thinking, but the Fatestrings gave off faint glimmers even when he wasn't trying to look at them - but he didn’t get any bad feelings from the ones he could see, so hopefully Jesmon was leading them somewhere safe.

  
  


They all stumbled into the second village a few minutes before the sun set. The first digimon they ran into was a Vilemon. Which they knew because the digimon introduced themself as such, before immediately deciding that they should all rest first because it was almost nighttime. Wallace would have been worried, but Jesmon didn’t seem to think that they were a threat, and he couldn’t sense any bad Fatestrings, so he wasn’t. 

  
  


He let himself be shepherded along with the other children and digimon to one of the buildings, with beds and soft blankets, and Wallace climbed onto one of the beds. It was very comfy and soft. Jun and Rina and Kiseki were still awake, talking about something, but Wallace just closed his eyes and went to sleep. He could deal with it tomorrow.

  
  


_ There were dreams that he had, he knew this. He knows this. One slid by past another, twisting and twirling, the golden Fatestrings drifting around and pooling as if they were streams of water. Some turned to dust, others gently wrapped around his dream-self and showed him their Possibilities, what Could Be and Could Yet Happen. _

  
  


_ Daisuke, older, with a set of goggles that were a bit worn hanging around his neck, sitting in a field somewhere with Kiseki next to him, sprawled out on the grass. Rina sitting to the other side of him, laughing at something, another boy her same age and yet much shorter than she was (for she was so much taller than she was at the current moment in this event that Could Be) with black hair and gray eyes and a white suit, giggling quietly just as Daisuke grinned proudly. It was content, and peaceful, and happy and relaxed and safe. _

  
  


_ Another Fatestring, a twisted one that branched off of itself.  _

  
  


_ Jun, limply sitting on the ground, staring up at a giant demon that was black and purple and giggled as if all the world was a game, blood on its teeth and blood on the ground next to where Jun was and the bitten and torn-apart body of another boy with bushy brown hair and that same pair of goggles that Daisuke had been wearing was held in the demon’s teeth. Tears poured down Jun’s face, and someone screamed. _

  
  


_ Another Fatestring.  _

  
  


_ A golden circlet shattering, blood clinging to the sides of it, a body falling to the floor and a giant purple bird with a red face screaming, a wail torn from a blue and gold dragon’s throat. _

  
  


_ The dream shifts. _

  
  


_ There is a dragon in white and gold with blades for legs, facing off against a different dragon in black and gold armor, a red gem in their forehead. The white-armored dragon snarls, and launches an endless barrage of attacks at the black-armored dragon. The dragon in black does not attack back - only dodges, again and again, as three teenagers stand below them, watching the attacks, with pink and red and black hair and gray and blue and black eyes. _

  
  


_ " **How many times do we have to keep doing this?** " The white-armored dragon shrieks. " **How many times do we have to watch them die?!"** _

  
  


_ It splintered apart and formed into something else again, and yet his dreaming self did not notice any oddity in this - only noting that it happened. _

_ Twice, battlefields drifted across, one with angels standing upright and masses of demons unmoving on the ground in pools of golden blood, one with the demons standing and the angels in their blood, the two futures mirrors of each other. _

  
  


_ A ‘blink’, to see Rina, almost peaceful looking, with hands shaking her and blurred faces shaking her, her head wet, droplets of water stubbornly clinging to her hair and eyelashes and he could almost feel the water in her lungs, a weight pressing down on them that he knew was not there. She seemed tired, in that state, though there was no need for rest when you were dead. She would struggle, and grow weaker, and then close her eyes as the last bubbles of oxygen left her lips and she let go and stopped moving. _

_ Another ‘blink’, and then the scene was that of a forest, a long blue-green dragon with a golden helmet and purple mane, as well as brown twisted root-like looking circle around its chest and small white streamers extending from said brown circle. The dragon curled around two smaller forms and  **snarled** at something in front of them - _

  
  


_ Then a blink, and there was nothing but devastation. Corroded land everywhere, shifting patterns of black and white that clashed against each other in checkerboards and striped patterns that made his eyes hurt. Nothing but grayed land and checkerboard patterns and the odd mechanical buzzing that came from nowhere and anywhere. _

  
  


_ The Fatestring twisted away, and a different drifted into view, glimmering. Gently running his fingers across it, he got the sensation of cheers and dances, a Troupemaster in pink and blue and accents of brass, twisting around and holding their hands out as if asking for an encore. _

  
  


_ It shifted away again, and then there was an odd area with circuit boards and a creature that was less flesh and more stitched bands keeping the creature together. _

  
  


_ The creature charged at a different creature, one that looked like Kiseki but much spikier - some Magnamon variant? _

  
  


_ As the two clashed, once again the dream broke apart and reformed, this time into a brown-haired girl with her hair in a braid, and a small white creature with blue butterfly wings on their head and hands. _

_ And then there was destruction again, only now it was an odd reddish mass that moved, slowly, devouring everything in its path. _

  
  


_ He decided he did not like that future, or the future with the checkerboard patterns and desolation. _

  
  


Several more possibilities flashed before his eyes, from a land of nothing but scorched earth to one of steel structures everywhere with barely any plants left to a world with several blueish spiraling portals tearing apart a barely-held-together world to an armored angel with a large sickle or a different angel with bat wings. And, sticking to his mind for a few seconds longer than the others was a scene of an angel that looked  _ wrong _ , massive black wings and oddly shaped limbs that ended in twisted prongs rather than proper hands or feet.

  
  


Waking up in the morning brought a headache - slowly, Fate and Wallace were merging a little bit more. It would take time, because Fate was centillions of years old and had only just become aware of itself again, whereas Wallace was still only four and had such a delicate human mind - but it was a process that was happening.

  
  


Wallace shook his head, scrunching up his nose as he did so. Those were the  _ weird _ thoughts, the ones where he acted like he was some kinda god who mattered more than anything else. Which wasn’t nice at  _ all _ to think. Still, the headache was unpleasant, and he hoped that it would go away after Fate settled into being Wallace properly. Whenever it was that that happened.

  
  


Abruptly, something very soft and furred shoved their face into Wallace’s, and he reared back on reflex, scrunching his face. A couple seconds had him see that it was Chocomon - still a large fluffy rabbit with those purple pants, with Gummimon next to them, the other rabbit still covered in all that green armor. 

  
  


“Wallace, wake up already!” Chocomon says, ears twitching a bit. In excitement, he thought. “Jun-nee-san and the nice digimon made food! But it was mostly the nice digimon.” And with that, the brown-furred rabbit easily picked up the (quite small, compared to them) still-half-unawake Wallace and bounded out of the small hut he’d been sleeping in, Gummimon hovering above the ground a few inches from what Wallace could see, just a little bit ahead of their twin.

  
  


The food was served in a big sort of town hall looking-building, from what Wallace remembered his Momma showing him during that one time they went out to celebrate the Fourth of July, and there was lots of digimon all eating and chatting. Not all of them were all the way awake yet, so Wallace didn’t stand out too much except by his not being a digimon. Nobody said anything though, just kinda shuffled him and Chocomon and Gummimon towards where Jun and her bird and brother and  _ his _ dragon were eating at one of the ends of the long table they’d set up. There was a lot of different foods, and Wallace didn’t recognize half of them (or some of the ones he saw didn’t seem like breakfast food - wasn’t soup supposed to be for dinner?). He  _ did _ discover that they had breakfast crepés, which was good, and the four-year-old took about five seconds to start eating several of them. 

  
  


Ryuudamon and Dodomon were sitting there too, next to Tailmon and a digimon that looked like Tailmon but with black fur. Wallace blinked at them. “Were all of you here before?”

  
  


Tailmon made a sort of shrug. “We caught up to you.” And they left it at that, because it was early in the morning and Wallace probably just hadn’t noticed them and he was still hungry.

  
  


Next to them was Rina and V.V., Rina eating pancakes (she’d tear of a piece and dip it into a little puddle of syrup she had on her plate. Wallace didn’t know how digimon had pancakes and syrup and other foods in the digital world, but he wasn’t gonna ask about it) and V.V. munching on some bacon. Rina looked up from eating to wave at Wallace, though. Shyly, but she still waved.

  
  


Honestly, it wasn’t very different from what breakfast probably could have been like if they had all been in the real world instead, or something.

  
  


Except the digimon that got up and gestured for them all (well, they mostly made the movement at Jun and Daisuke, but Wallace and Rina followed them, and so did all the digimon partners and also the two Tailmons and Ryuudamon and Dodomon) to follow them. That wasn’t something that was normal.

  
  


Wallace and everyone else followed the digimon. It was the nice thing to do. They were led to a plain room, with wood panelled walls and simple stone floors. It was a nice room, Wallace thought, but it was still kinda empty.

  
  


Out of nowhere, a ninja star came flying through the air and hit the wall right next to where Jun’s head was.

  
  


Everyone jumped. Rina and Wallace and Daisuke all screamed, and Jun froze. Kiseki hissed and had kinda scrambled up the wall, claws digging into the wood, and V.V. had clambered up onto Rina’s shoulders and was trying to tuck himself into her neck. Chocomon and Gummimon also pressed themselves against the wall, ears pressed against their heads and both prepared to fight. Aquilamon, lastly, had poofed up all his feathers, looking a lot bigger than he was before.

  
  


There was a small owl-looking digimon in the other hand of the room. “Didn’t think you’d react that violently.” They said, looking at Wallace, Rina, Daisuke, and Kiseki especially.

  
  


Jun was the first one to talk. “Ninjas?!” Her voice was kinda high-pitched, and she sounded a little bit like she was trying to keep herself from screaming more. It reminded Wallace of how Momma would talk about people on the movies who were “hys-ter-i-cal” and needed to be calmed down when a lot of scary stuff happened.

  
  


(if Fate had more knowledge of this situation, it did not say anything. it would accept the childish view of the world it was given, for that body and that mind had been a gift from its Sister)

  
  


The digimon blinked again. “Ninjas.” They confirmed. “You’ll need to get better reflexes and get better at fighting, but you could probably get good enough to not die immediately in the war.” The blinked again, before jumping up a bit. “Oh! I’m Falcomon by the way.” They bowed a small bit after saying their name.

  
  


Everyone stared at Falcomon for a couple seconds. Then -

  
  


“Fighting?” 

  
  


“Bird-?”

  
  


“ _ War _ ?!”

  
  


The last word was shrieked by Kiseki, who seemed suddenly pale and shaky, like he’d remembered something bad all of a sudden. He’d went back to standing on the ground, but now his ears were pressed against the back of his head more than they had been before, and his fur was all puffed up and on end, and even though it looked like it hurt his broken tail was stiff and stretched out. It reminded Wallace of a scared (or really,  _ really _ angry) cat.

  
  


Falcomon blinked again. “War. Don’t you know about it? You  _ did _ come from the direction of the Village of Saints, and they try to kill anyone who isn’t an angel digimon - and sometimes even then, they’re really paranoid.”

  
  


Kiseki seemed to get even  _ more _ upset by this, but Falcomon hadn’t changed their tone from the conversational one at all. Wallace wasn’t sure  _ why _ Kiseki was so upset about it (but he remembered, vaguely, the golden Fatestrings that were connected by little knots that tied certain events together, the ones that looked like they’d been made of a different kind of yarn that was  _ almost _ the same color, but was a different thickness or texture, and remembered that so many fatestrings revolved around Kiseki and memory).

  
  


“I think,” Kiseki said, after a few seconds, and even with the golden armor on (that Yasahii the dragon had said he probably shouldn’t keep on with all his injuries, and Tenkuu the dragon said he  _ definitely _ shouldn’t keep on with all his injuries) you could tell that Kiseki was putting in effort to keep his voice as level and calm as it was right then, “that we need to sit down and get some clarification before we continue.”

  
  


No one argued with him.

~~~

  
  


Falcomon sat, and told them all ( _ them all _ meaning Wallace, Chocomon and Gummimon, Jun, Aquilamon, Daisuke, Kiseki, Rina, V.V., Tailmon and BlackTailmon, Ryuudramon, and Dodomon) about the war in quiet, tired tones. It had been long ago enough that no one really knew how it happened, but at one point the Demon Lords, seven digimon who’d been Angels, had Fallen (Falcomon didn’t elaborate on what that meant). The Three Celestials had opposed the Demon Lords, and tensions had been raising for a while, until they broke, just barely a month ago. And that was when the war had started.

  
  


They all sat for a while after that, thinking. Falcomon had left, but all the rest of them were still there in that wood-panelled room, sitting next to each other (or on each other, with some of the smaller members of the group).

  
  


Jun was the first one to speak. “We should stay out of the war.”

  
  


Everyone glanced at Kiseki a bit - he’d spoken up alongside Jun before, more than anyone else, and he had a kind of quiet authority that followed him. Wallace thought, anyways. He just had that sort of feel about him. To the group’s surprise, however, Kiseki didn’t say anything. He just stayed quiet, not quite looking at anything.

  
  


Jun hesitated a moment, before reaching out to tap his arm from a couple places away from the dragon. “Ki-kun?”

  
  


No reaction.

  
  


Daisuke squirmed out from beside his sister, wiggling his way onto Kiseki’s lap, and poked Kiseki’s chest a couple times. “Ki-chan? Aren’t you gonna say anything?”

  
  


Kiseki blinked, slowly, and looked down at Daisuke, before looking over at Jun. “Ah. You’re right.” He sounded tired, or maybe scared - Wallace couldn’t tell which one. A long sigh, before he sat up again, shifted Daisuke a bit, and added his own input. “We should stick to gathering information about any way for you four to get home. Portals, or something like that. There’s always rumors.”

  
  


Jun nodded. “That makes sense.”

  
  


Nobody mentioned how he said ‘ _ you four _ ’, and the assumption that only Daisuke, Jun, Wallace, and Rina would be going home, and that their digimon partners, who they’d all gotten attached to in the month the four humans had all been in the digital world.

  
  


~~~

  
  


Their first attempt to get information ended. . . Poorly. Ish..

  
  


_ It could have been could be is worse _ , Fate mused, tucked into a little book in the library they were all in.  _ All those Fatestrings tied around, and we end up somewhere somewhat safe _ . It was true that a library wasn't the best place to get information on portals - (not when most of the information was speculative and only discussed theory and whether other world's even existed or not, rather than any concrete information on where you'd fine one) - but it was still safer to be outside in a battle.

  
  


Speaking of - there was a battle outside. Some mix of Angels and Demons were fighting, and there might have been some from a third faction mixed in, but he wasn't sure. Wallace wasn't sure of a lot of things, because Fate only looked at  _ futures _ , not individuals - only if he focused really hard, and he was still getting used to how everything all worked again so the main thing he'd been doing was getting used to seeing and not seeing the Fatestrings at will, and how to follow individual ones or weed out certain ones. Like how you'd toggle a display or filter something on a spreadsheet program (because he knew things that might not be or may have been for a while).

  
  


Anyways.

  
  


Jun and Kiseki had been working on sifting through opposite sections of the library. Aquilamon had been helping Jun, because she didn't read Digimoji (yet), so Aquilamon had written down " " and was having her look for anywhere those three Digimoji showed up in the little scroll cartridges that everything was written on.

  
  


Surprisingly, Rina had been able to read the Digimoji too - even she didn't know how. "It just looks like it makes sense." She said, inserting a drum roll right after the 'it looks' part. "I can't explain. It just -  _ drr  _ \- it looks like how English does, or kanji, or katakana. I can just read it. I read it, and -  _ drrrr _ \- it makes sense." She blinked up at Jun and Kiseki, who'd both been looking at her with identical looks of shock. 

  
  


When they didn't say anything after a couple seconds, Rina started to fidget, and she picked up V.V. from where he stood on the floor next to her. "I - you know how you learn hiragana, and - you learn hiragana and then you learn katakana and then kanji? And - and you learn kanji, and you know which ones mean -  _ drrrr _ ,- which ones mean the same things as the sounds the different, different hiragana make, and it makes sense? Um. . ." She trailed off, still fidgeting, hands gently squeezing and releasing and squeezing V.V.'d arms. "It's," - and here it looked like she was making an effort not to make another drum roll like she'd gotten into a habit of doing (but she could have, 20/3 odds, and most of them were due to nerves making her repeat the noise) - "it's kind of like that."

  
  


Slowly, Jun nodded. "That makes sense, I guess. Maybe somebody showed you back at the cabin?"

  
  


Rina perked up, visibly relieved at being given an excuse/explanation. "Yeah! That's probably what happened."

  
  


The search for information continued after that. For several minutes, it went uninterrupted, Wallace sitting next to Daisuke and Rina, with a few scrolls next to the latter while the former was mostly just pouting about not being able to use Kiseki’s belly as a pillow again. Daisuke pouted, and Rina sifted through scrolls at a much slower pace than Jun or Kiseki, and Wallace went back to trying his best to teach them English - which he hadn’t been doing as much of, recently, because of moving around a lot. Daisuke and Rina and Jun and Chocomon and Gummimon were picking it up well, though, and V.V. was definitely trying, and Kiseki mostly did good too, even if he was a little bit behind because of all that time that he had been resting after getting beat up by the Moosemon. Wallace was doing good at learning Japanese, too - apparently Daisuke and Rina were only just starting to learn kanji (and the way Jun said it made Wallace think that Daisuke was learning how to read and write early, because she’d just started teaching him one day), so it was mostly the three of them all learning while Jun taught what she knew. Their partners all did the same, of course, except for Aquilamon who seemed vaguely uninterested in all the language-learning because “I can learn it later if I really want to”. 

  
  


Aquilamon himself gave a shout, suddenly, jerking Wallace’s head over to look at him and Jun, with Daisuke and Rina and V.V. and Chocomon and Gummimon doing the same.

  
  


“Did you find something?” Kiseki asked, bounding over on long strides from a few shelves away.

  
  


“Yes! Well, no, not what we’re looking for - but I did find a neat thing!” The bird’s feathers were all puffed up in excitement, and he gestured with a wing, the little thumb-looking feather sticking out for emphasis. “Jun-nee-san, Jun-nee-san read that one again!”

  
  


“Uh -” Jun looked startled at suddenly being called on, and looked down at the scroll she’d been holding. “Uh,  _ 信仰に強い _ ? _ Ισχυρή _στην πίστη_ _ ?”

  
  


Aquilamon let out a small screech, enough to make Wallace jump in surprise. “No, no not that bit, the one under it!”

  
  


“Uh-” Jun fumbled a bit, and squinted at the characters written on the scroll. “ _Δυνάστες_? デュナステース ?”

  
  


“ _ Yes _ !” the bird cried out, now flapping his wings a bit and feathers  _ definitely _ puffed in excitement. “ _ Dynástes _ ! That’s what I want my name to be!”

  
  


“You picked your name from a scroll?” Kiseki asked, in a tone of voice that made him sound very confused, even if Wallace couldn’t see his face well enough to tell.

  
  


The newly-named Dynástes gave a triumphant look. “Yes! It’s what I want my name to be, so it’s what I’m gonna be called!”

  
  


“If you say so, bird.” Jun said, with a tone that couldn’t be anything but fond. “Does the word have any meaning?”

  
  


“Yeah!” Dynástes turned to face her (well, turned his head - he had weird owl neck bones), tucking his wings back the way they were. “It means ‘oppressors’!” He paused for a moment. “Or ‘lord’, I’m not sure. I might be remembering it wrong.” He paused again and looked at this scroll. “No, I’m pretty sure it means ‘oppressors’.”

  
  


Jun blinked at him. “You can read Greek.” It was a statement, but it came out sounding more like a question.

  
  


Wallace blinked. “Weren’t the Greeks really old people who used to vote together and stuff? Momma says that Athens was the first democratic city, and that’s what our system we use now is based off of.”

  
  


Jun turned to him and then she was blinking at Wallace, too. “How do you know about Athens? We have to look up stuff like that if we want to know it, the teachers at my school don’t really talk about it.”

  
  


Wallace shrugged. “America cares a lot about its origins and democracy.”

  
  


Dynástes shuffled then, and Jun looked at him again. “I guess I can read Greek, if that’s what that language that’s written is. I can speak it too, there were a few other hatchmates of mine who got taught by our parent. She was an Airdramon - and her mane and feathers were really soft, and she made the words sound pretty.” He droopped for a few moments. 

  
  


“I dunno what happened to her. One day she went out to go get us food and then just. . . didn’t come back. And then my hatchmates went looking for her, one by one, and then I was all alone because none of  _ them _ came back.” He made a sad, low trilling noise, and Wallace wanted to hug him. Jun  _ did _ hug him, pressing her face against his feathers and sinking into them.

  
  


The Aquilamon shook himself for a small moment, shifting so that Jun was partway tucked under his wing. “Don’t be too upset, Jun-nee-san. I left, ‘cause I was lonely and it hurt being alone, but then I found you, and I’m not alone anymore!” He nudged Jun with his beak a bit. “So now I have you, and you and Daisuke-kun and everybody else can be my flock, now. Not my hatchmates, but flock is good too, right?”

  
  


Jun nodded, head barely visible among all the poofy feathers. It seemed to reassure Dynástes enough, though.

  
  


A few moments went by like that, Jun sunk into the feathers of her bird, and Wallace with his two rabbits sitting somewhere nearby (near enough for him to still feel their presence, maybe a few feet back at most), and Daisuke looking like he wanted to climb into Kiseki’s lap even if he wasn’t for some reason.

  
  


Then Rina spoke up.

  
  


“I found -  _ drrr _ \- this bit that says something about portals and forests and spirit-y energy, but some of the words -  _ drr _ \- the words are big and I don’t know what they mean.” She said it conversationally, one hand on the scroll and one petting V.V. between the ears, like the way Momma would say stuff like ‘the weather is nice today, there’s not any storms at all’.

  
  


For some reason, she seemed surprised when everyone rushed over to look at her and the scroll.

  
  


(Kiseki clambered over several bookshelves, and Daisuke looked very happy to be able to climb into his dragon’s lap. Wallace didn’t do much but scoot back until his back was against Chocomon and Gummimon, both so he could give them space and also because he wanted to cuddle his partners sometimes, too, Daisuke and Jun and Rina weren’t the  _ only _ ones who could do that.)

  
  


“Here, let me read it - I know more big words than you do, I’m older.” Kiseki said, reaching out with both hands. No one questioned him - nobody knew how old Kiseki or Dynástes  _ were _ , not without asking, but he was  _ probably _ right about that - and Rina handed over the scroll with minimum fuss. The Magnamon skimmed the scroll in some parts and read more thoroughly in others, before nodding to himself. “We’ll need to ask around to confirm what this says, about these places, but we’ve got a good idea of where to start.”

  
  


And so it was.

  
  


~~~

  
  


In hindsight, it wasn’t really the  _ first _ attempt to find information that was a bad attempt - it was all the ones  _ after _ that one.

  
  


"I don't know any kind of forest that you're talking about." Frowned a digimon, one who looked like a woman except her skin was gray and her hair was white and he was pretty sure people didn't have eyes that were that red (unless they were Rina). She offered to ask around for them, though, and said her name was LadyDevimon. Apparently the village they'd stumbled into was more of a town, and had a  _ lot _ of digimon in it, only most of them were all a bit tired from the war already that everybody just wanted to try and get what happiness they could before it ended.

  
  


It was a nice thought, though, being happy before an inevitable end.

After a few moments, and more words, it turned out she  _ did _ know the forest, and had just wanted to be sure they weren't going to do anything bad there - which was probably why all the other people they'd asked had said they didn't know anything, because they didn't want bad things to happen in the portal forests. 

  
  


Anyways.

  
  


LadyDevimon was nice, and even offered to buy them all food. Wallace didn't even know digimon  _ did _ buy stuff - and apparently nobody else did, because everybody was just as shocked.

  
  


LadyDevimon gave them a Look (the capital L was very important), and put a hand on her hips, asking, "what, you didn't think we didn't know how money works, did you? Did all of you come from villages?" She held up a hand before any of them could speak, going, "wait, no, don't answer that, actually."

  
  


Still, she bought them food and had them all sit down in a cafe that was very big and also had lots of different friends. Lots of  _ other _ digimon came back and forth to talk to her, but Wallace could tell they weren’t going to be a threat (the Fatestrings made sure of that) so he didn’t pay a bunch of attention and just ate his food instead. It was really tasty. Dynástes and Kiseki were paying more attention to who was coming and going and saying what to LadyDevimon, but Jun had only managed to do that for a little bit before she was eating her food with everybody else.

  
  


Jesmon had showed up again, sitting in the corner (because LadyDevimon had gotten them a seat that was in the corner, and maybe Wallace tugged on that Fatestring just a  _ little _ ), taking little bites of his food. Dodomon had been set on the table, and Ryuudramon was giving them little bites of food inbetween eating as well - probably because Dodomon was still a baby - without saying much (but Ryuudamon didn’t really talk, either - Wallace thought the most he had ever heard the fluffy armored dragon ever say was something to Rina). Tailmon and BlackTailmon were still glaring at each other a little bit, like they’d been since they met, but they managed to tolerate each other long enough to eat in silence and not try and attack each other. They were warming up to each other. Slowly.

  
  


Wallace tried not to pay too much attention on all the stressful things and just ate his food instead, like Rina and Daisuke and V.V. were doing. There was chocolate cheesecake. Wallace did not know that the digital world had chocolate cheesecake until just then, but they  _ did _ , and it was  _ yummy _ , and V.V. definitely agreed with Wallace because the tiny dragon had already eaten his and Rina’s slice of cheesecake. (Rina pouted for a few seconds, before stealing Wallace’s cheesecake. Wallace stole Daisuke’s, and Jun gave Daisuke  _ her _ cheesecake, and Kiseki wasn’t eating  _ his _ slice of Cheesecake so he gave that to Jun.)

  
  


Wallace did pay attention enough to notice when the last person left, and LadyDevimon stretched, joints popping like how Wallace saw some people do on TV. “Well, children -”

  
  


“ _ Hey _ !”

  
  


LadyDevimon paused a moment, then inclined her head towards Kiseki. “Children and Kiseki. I have good news and bad news.”

  
  


“What’s the bad news?” Jun asked, fork still holding the last bite of her cheesecake.

  
  


LadyDevimon grimaced. “Unfortunately, the areas where there’s rumors of portal activity have been frequently inhabited by seven certain demonic digimon, and they don’t take kindly to people poking around where they think something interesting is going on. Partly for the sake of said people’s safety, but mostly because they don’t want anyone bothering them or getting too much information.”

  
  


“And the good news. . . ?” Dynástes asked, tentatively.

  
  


LadyDevimon’s grimace morphed into a grin. “Good news is I happen to be one of them.”

  
  


Silence for a few moments. Wallace was entirely sure that everyone was taking a moment to process those words, and for a few moments an odd tension began to build, settling and settling until Wallace wasn’t sure if the silence  _ would _ be broken.

  
  


Then Dodomon squeaked something, loudly, and they all turned to look at the Baby digimon. Who was now larger, because they’d evolved to a different digimon right then.

  
  


Everyone blinked. The digimon-that-used-to-be-Dodomon blinked back at them, looking identical to Dodomon except now they had four little legs and a tiny, stubby little tail. Then they squeaked again.

  
  


Ryuudamon made a fond-sounding huffing noise. “Dorimon-chan wants food.” He paused, and tilted his head a few degrees, before his form rippled and glowed and then he, too, had evolved, this new form looking distinctly different from his previous form, even if there were similarities. 

  
  


The digimon-that-had-been-Ryuudamon had the same pale-orange fur, but he wore black plated armor all along his body, with longer tufts of fur peeking out the end of the armor at the tail. There was a ring of white fur around his mouth, and his eyes were a pale green, with a small bit of red fur around them. The armor had silver accents, and there were wooden plates with bands of metal on them that covered his shoulders and upper legs, with additional black-and-silver-accented bands on each wrist and ankle. Both his feet and hands had three fingers with big, short white claws on each, and he looked like he was made to walk on all fours instead of just on two legs.

  
  


He was also hovering, a few inches off of the ground, so that was. . . it was a thing. He announced his name as “Ginryuumon”, and Wallace made sure to try and remember that. It would be rude not to remember your friend’s name.

  
  


“. . . well,” said LadyDevimon after a few moments, “you two seem to be pretty close if your evolution times are so closely matched.”

  
  


Ginryuumon shrugged. “Dorimon-chan little. Have to protect little ones.”

  
  


“That does make sense.” LadyDevimon agreed. Then she stood from the table, and motioned for them all to follow her. “Come along, children and Kiseki-san and Jesmon-san. We have places to be, and I’m sure you’d all like to go home.”

  
  


For all the way people said demons were evil and that you’d go to Hell if you talked with them, LadyDevimon was really nice.

  
  


They all followed her like obedient little ducklings (that was what Momma always said when Wallace followed her - that he was an “obedient little duckling” and then she’d bop him on the nose. Ducklings were cute anyways). She ended up leading them to another little hut (or maybe it was a house and they just built houses that way in the digital world - Wallace wasn’t an expert), and asked them all if they’d be willing to stay there another day or two before her “friends” (who were probably the other six Demon Lords, since she was one of them) were able to meet up with them all and find that specific area with the portals again.

  
  


“We got a tip from someone we trust that one of the Three Celestials is willing to call a truce. Apparently they’ve met three humans of their own, and the one Celestial is more concerned about all of you humans getting home.” LadyDevimon explained, as she opened the door and let them all in.

  
  


As they entered, her form shimmered until she looked more like a person in fancy clothing than she had before. “This is my Lilithmon form.” She told them. “I generally use my LadyDevimon form for being out and about, since a Perfect is strong enough to not make you want to be fought but not  _ too _ noticeable, but there’s not much of a need right now. Anyways, I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

  
  


They all ended up settling down on a lot of very squishy and comfy blankets and foam pads, with a lot of pillows thrown in as well. Lilithmon didn’t explain why she had that much bedding stuff, but she did promise that tomorrow they would go to the forest, and then they’d get to go home.

  
  


Wallace snuggled down into the blankets and bedding, pouting at Chocomon and Gummimon until they both snuggled up next to him as well. For once, it was easy to ignore the  _ off _ of Fate and all the Fatestrings as he fell asleep.

  
  
He was gonna go  _ home _ tomorrow. And with that thought in mind, he drifted to sleep, happy and content at the thought of being able to be home with his Momma again soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you take nothing else from this chapter, know that jun's aquilamon is named dynástes (and yes you have to put the accent on the letter). additionally, the process of going from a mostly-formless primordial god to a tiny human is Not Painless and that mental connection between the two takes a little bit to figure out. fate _is_ several centillions old, after all - and that's 10^303 years per centillion (so basically Fate and Miracles are _old_ )
> 
> also guess which one of the kids Miracles is, it shouldnt be too hard, i dont think im very subtle (it is stated once in the chapter, but the chapter was pretty long so i dont blame you if you dont remember)
> 
> additionally: if you think the ninja star came from nowhere, it did. i followed Official Nanowrimo Advice of "if you can't think of anything, insert ninjas to up your wordcount". it's good advice
> 
> Fate: _quietly panicking_  
>  Wallace: can i have thirty minutes without a headache please?

**Author's Note:**

> friendly reminder that there's a miracles verse discord! https://discord.gg/FTkZkyy  
> feel free to join if you wanna chat about this au or maybe get a sneak peek at some of the stuff that's gonna be happening! we're all nice and we don't bite, i promise!


End file.
